


To the Rescue

by phoenix_writing



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Children, Dragons, Gen, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, M/M, Not Harry Potter and the Cursed Child Compliant, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-21
Updated: 2019-12-21
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:40:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21879019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phoenix_writing/pseuds/phoenix_writing
Summary: Even ten years after the defeat of Voldemort, Harry still finds himself rushing to the rescue when someone is in trouble.
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter
Comments: 4
Kudos: 97





	To the Rescue

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place approximately ten years post DH, without the Epilogue. Mostly gen, with a hint of slash at the end.

~*~

As Harry heard the sounds of a disturbance and hurried towards it, he reflected a little ruefully that he was doing exactly what his friends alwasy accused him of. He gave brief consideration to ignoring the sound on principle and proving that he didn’t _have_ to respond, but it sounded like something was going on, and if someone was in trouble, then Harry wanted to help if he could.

The fact that the sound proved to be coming from Knockturn Alley only spurred Harry on, though he had the feeling he knew exactly what Hermione would say to that. But really, Harry was an adult now, he was _allowed_ to be walking down questionable alleys if he wanted to.

He had his wand at the ready when he entered the blind alley, and as soon as he realised what he was seeing in the dim light, he reacted without thought.

“Expelliarmus!” Harry roared.

The wand of the large, bellowing man flew into Harry’s hand, and he turned with a cry of outrage to face Harry, who now had his wand pointed at the man’s face.

“Keep out of it!” the man bellowed.

“You had your wand pointed at a child,” Harry said as calmly as he was able given that he could actually feel his blood pressure rising by the moment.

“That miserable little blighter was stealing!”

The child, whom Harry had thought was cowering against the wall, he could now see had curled around something, protecting it.

In fact, it looked a lot like—

“Is that a dragon egg?” Harry asked.

A little voice piped up, “Yes!”

The man immediately looked shifty.

“Of course not,” he said belligerently. “But it’s my property, and I want it back.”

A little head shot up, and Harry’s breath caught as he took in the pointy chin and grey eyes that went with the fine, white-blond hair. Right now the eyes were narrowed, and the expression of scorn was one that Harry recognised well.

“It _is_ a dragon,” the little girl said emphatically.

“It’s not!” the man yelled, as though sheer volume would make him win this argument.

“It _is_ ,” the girl insisted once more—and tossed the shell at the man.

He fumbled but caught it, at which point both he and Harry realised that the shell was in pieces.

The little girl rose to her feet, and the creature that twined up her arm and perched on her shoulder looked … an awful lot like a dragon. Smaller, even, than Norbert had been, but … definitely possessing a scaled body, four legs, and wings.

The little girl shot the man a withering look, and Harry followed it up with a disparaging look of his own.

Because Harry’s life was never that simple, the man couldn’t just back down, but instead, tried to insist, “That’s _mine_ , that is.”

Harry blew a breath out through his nose.

“As I’m sure you’re aware,” Harry tried to sound reasonable, “dragon eggs are classified as a Class A Non-Tradeable Material.”

“It’s _not_ a dragon,” the man insisted again.

Harry would believe that it had been crossed with _something_ , but—

“Experimental breeding has been banned for decades,” he pointed out.

The man reached for the creature, the little girl skittered along the wall to stay out of his reach, and the very dragon-like creature opened its mouth and spouted a small gout of flame at the man.

They all froze.

“Told you,” the little girl said with satisfaction.

“Are you _certain_ this creature is yours?” Harry asked the man even more pointedly. “I’d be happy to take you to the Ministry to discuss your ownership further.”

The man’s eyes had narrowed, his expression growing ever more resentful, but after a moment of internal struggle, he said stiffly, “I must have been mistaken.”

Harry nodded. “In that case, we’ll be on our way.”

He held out his hand for the girl, and after an assessing look at him, she moved away from the wall and came and took it.

Harry waited until they’d made it to the entrance to the alley before he tossed the man his wand back and then Apparated himself, his charge, and the creature that was hopefully not 100% a dragon because it was currently curled around the little girl’s shoulders, to Diagon Alley.

Harry had the feeling that this was going to end in tears, but hopefully not his. He’d never been great with the ages of children, but he was pretty sure that she was probably four or five. Now that she was upright and neither cowering nor hunched protectively over an unexpected dragon, she looked remarkably composed despite her somewhat dirty appearance, but Harry would not be at all surprised to find out that that sort of poise came with the Malfoy genes.

“Are you hurt?” Harry asked.

She shook her head. “You took away the bad man’s wand.”

“I sure did,” Harry agreed. “It’s not nice to pick on people who are smaller than you are.”

She nodded in emphatic agreement. “Bullies are bad.” She eyed him. “I like you. I’m Rommy.”

This sounded like the least Malfoy name that Harry could possible imagine, but given what she looked like, he still couldn't imagine that he was wrong about her parentage.

“It’s nice to meet you, Rommy. I’m Harry. Tell me, where are your parents?”

Matter-of-factly, she told him, “Mummy lives in France with her lady friend, and Daddy needed to get something out of his Vault at Gringotts.”

“You sneaked away from your father in Gringotts?” Harry asked.

In his experience, sneaking around Gringotts was a lot easier said than done.

But Rommy shook her head. “Daddy left me with Aunt Pansy ‘n Uncle Blaise.”

“I think we’d better get you back there,” Harry said.

The little girl nodded and then confided, “I don’t know where they are.” She frowned faintly. “Well, I don’t know where _I_ am.”

“You are now back in Diagon Alley,” Harry told her, gesturing at the streets ahead of them. “Behind us is Knockturn Alley, which is a dangerous place for young witches and wizards to be on their own.” Mindful of his own formative years, he said carefully, “You should probably try to stay out of there.”

She looked up at him with wide, soulful eyes. “It was only ‘cause of the dragon.”

Yeah, Harry knew he didn’t have a leg to stand on with this one, and she wasn’t _his_ daughter.

“You can explain to your father,” Harry told her.

She wrinkled her nose at him, and Harry narrowly managed not to snort, well certain that Rommy was a handful and probably had most people wrapped around her little finger.

“What’s the last shop or sight that you remember clearly from today?” he asked.

Slowly, they worked their way back through Diagon Alley, retracing Rommy’s steps as best they could until they finally ended up down a side street that Harry did not usually frequent, and the need for further investigation was suddenly redundant as a voice screeched, “How could you have _lost_ my daughter?!”

Rommy’s face lit up, not seeming at all perturbed that her father was currently yelling.

“The entire shelf collapsed, and half the stock with it. It was chaos!” a man’s voice protested. “There was no possible way to keep an eye on everything.”

“I didn’t ask you to keep an eye on everything,” Malfoy snarled. “I asked you to keep an eye on my _daughter_.”

Rommy tugged on Harry’s hand. “Let’s go!”

The bell jangled as Rommy began to push open the door, Harry reaching out to keep it open for her.

“They’re closed!” Malfoy snarled without looking.

Two people Harry vaguely recognized as Zabini and Pansy Parkinson were both faced off from Malfoy, Pansy’s arms crossed defensively and Zabini in the midst of gesticulating at the collapsed shelving, which had indeed made a gigantic mess.

“Hello, Daddy!” Rommy chirruped happily.

Malfoy whirled round and was across the room faster than Harry could blink, gathering Rommy into his arms and hugging her for all she was worth. Since she was still holding Harry’s hand, he ended up with his arm squashed against Malfoy, who craned his head over his daughter’s shoulder to look at Harry in confusion.

“What are _you_ doing here, Potter?” Then he caught sight of the dragon, and his voice rose an octave. “What is _that_? Potter, what did you _do_?”

This, Harry thought wryly, was why Hermione was always questioning his life choices. He had done absolutely nothing, but as so often happened, his life conspired to make the ridiculous happen anyway.

“I found Rommy in Knockturn Alley and brought her back here,” Harry explained.

“He did, Daddy,” Rommy agreed before launching into a semi-coherent tale about the egg she had seen and the dragon she knew she needed to rescue and the bad man and Harry’s rescue.

Malfoy looked a bit like he was going to have a heart attack, but he listened to his daughter’s whole explanation remarkably patiently. His left eye twitched every time Rommy petted the dragon, but the creature was still curled up, looking quite comfortable around Rommy’s neck.

And then Rommy gave the dragon a particularly emphatic pat and said, “Her name is Alice, and I’m going to take such good care of her, I promise!”

Firmly, Malfoy said, “Andromeda, you will not be keeping the dragon.”

 _Andromeda_? As Harry struggled with the realisation that Malfoy had apparently named his daughter after a member of his family who had _married a Muggle_ , Rommy’s bottom lip trembled ominously.

“But Daddy—”

“Absolutely not.”

As it turned out, tantrums were even more destructive when you were having one while a miniature dragon was wrapped around your shoulders. Harry was pretty sure that the store was going to need a major overhaul thanks to the collapsed shelf anyway, but Zabini and Pansy managed to put out the fire while Harry and Malfoy tried to deal with the hysterical Rommy.

“Sweetheart, nothing that breathes fire makes a good house pet,” Malfoy said a little bit desperately.

“But she doesn’t have anywhere else to go! That man was mean to her!” Rommy wailed.

“It _is_ a good thing that you got her away from that man,” Harry told her. Malfoy shot him a look, but since Rommy was at least meeting Harry’s eyes now (with her big, red-rimmed, wet ones), Harry was counting that as a win. “But it’s not true that she has nowhere else to go. In fact, she has a _great_ place to go.”

Rommy’s eyes narrowed. “Where?”

“My best friend Ron’s brother Charlie is a dragon keeper. He takes care of dragons as a full-time job at a Sanctuary just for dragons. Alice would get to spend time with other dragons, and she’d be looked after by people who know exactly how to take care of dragons.”

“I could learn how to take care of dragons,” Rommy told him firmly.

“I’m sure you could,” Harry agreed. “But one of the first things you’ll learn is that dragons don’t live in houses. And they don’t go to school with little girls.”

Her brow wrinkled. “I could get a tutor. Daddy said so.”

Harry was hard-pressed not to laugh, and even Malfoy’s lips twitched, his tight shoulders loosening a little.

“That is definitely one option, but I’m not sure you’d like to live out in the wild, would you? Isn’t it nice to have a roof when it rains? And a soft bed to sleep in?”

Rommy let out a big, gusty sigh. “I guess so.”

Harry edged closer. “So how about we take Alice to see Charlie, and then maybe you could visit sometimes, if it’s all right with your father?”

Rommy’s face lit up, and Malfoy sent Harry a disparaging look but confirmed for his daughter that they could absolutely visit Alice.

Then it was just a matter of Harry arranging the Portkey, everyone else apologising to everyone else for losing their temper, their friend’s children, or themselves when running after stray dragon eggs, and it seemed like the day was not going to end in disaster after all.

Charlie didn’t have Ron’s temper, thankfully, and he took the arrival of Malfoy with a little Malfoy and a littler dragon in tow with aplomb. He exclaimed appropriately over Alice and put Rommy right at ease with his easy handling of the small dragon—and his willingness to show Rommy around the entire Sanctuary.

Malfoy blew out a breath when Rommy was out of sight.

“You look like you could use a drink, Malfoy,” Harry said with a laugh.

“You offering?” Malfoy asked.

Harry had just been making an observation, but….

“You know,” he said, “I think I am.”

Malfoy’s eyes narrowed slightly, and then a faint smirk appeared on his lips. “Dragons and Weasleys, Potter. You definitely owe me.”

“Multiple _rescues_ , Malfoy,” Harry correctly. “I think it’s actually _you_ who owes _me_.”

They continued to argue about whose fault this all was as Harry led the way to the dining area, but Harry couldn’t help but notice that they were both having trouble keeping a straight face as they argued. Harry was going to have quite the story to tell Ron and Hermione about just what happened when he went on yet another unexpected rescue mission.

~*~

_Finite incantatem_


End file.
